In a first, two Indian universities make it to Times’ top 40

Also, 11 other Indian universities have made it to the top 100 rankings. Around 18 countries are featured in 2015 rankings released on 4th December.

Around 15 universities – from Chile, China, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Russia and Turkey – have entered the tables for the first time. China has cemented its dominance among the emerging economies, retaining the top two places and increasing its representation among the top-100 institutions to 27, up from 23 last year. India has increased its representation with 11 of the top-100 places, up from 10 last year and it has a new national leader – Indian Institute of Science in 25th place and the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in 37th place.

Phil Baty, editor of the Times Higher Education Rankings, said “India is starting to show its potential in these rankings, increasing its overall representation in this new top-100 list to 11, from 10 last year. Only China and Taiwan have more top-100 institutions than India, which remains ahead of Russia and Brazil among the giant developing economies. But this improved showing is partly due to the fact that more Indian institutions have recognized the benefits of being part of the rankings process, and more are sharing their data with Times Higher Education”.

“Several Indian institutions have actually lost ground compared with last year. So there is clearly no room for any complacency. The good news is that by engaging with the global rankings and sharing performance data to benchmark themselves against the tough global standards set by Times Higher Education, India’s leading institutions have shown a hunger for further development and for sharing best practice. If this is backed by a government-led commitment to support India’s top universities to compete on the global stage, with sufficient funding and reforms, there would be plenty of room for optimism.”

The Rankings have been given after accessing all aspects of the modern university’s core missions (teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook). China retains the top two positions (Peking University followed by Tsinghua University) in the rankings.

Fudan University follows Peking and Tsinghua, taking ninth place, while University of Science and Technology of China loses its top-10 position, moving into joint 11th place. Russia has seen a dramatic improvement in its standing – increasing its representatives in the top 100 from just two last year to seven this year, and seeing its number one university, Moscow State University, moving from 10th to 5th.